Saturday, June 21, 2008
A sad 'so long' to carefree summers
From the RoundTable blog
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Linda Goodrich
Goodrich is a retired educator who lives in Roanoke.
It was with great sadness that I read the article about working parents coping with children during summer vacation ("Obligations to kids can cause schedule headache," June 9 Extra). Also mentioned were stay-at-home moms who were equally stressed over juggling their children's schedules and trying to "be there" for endless parent-audience events. There was a similar article in the paper last year at this time.
How unfortunate that we have come to this: keeping our children occupied and always having something for them to do have become jobs for the parents during kids' vacation time.
And how sad that adults feel they are not doing quality parenting if they can't show up for every child-centered occasion.
Whatever happened to a child waking up each summer morning to a day full of endless possibilities -- possibilities that did not include being ferried from one activity or pricey camp to another, many of which are now indoors.
When I was a child, my friends and I were expected to keep ourselves occupied and find our own things to do. Often we were shown the door right after breakfast and told not to return until lunch, then later on to stay outside until dinner.
During a year when my mother worked, I had all the free time I wanted, and was simply reminded not to lose the key to the house.
And how kids could fill the days! Roller skating, bicycling, exploring other neighborhoods, heading for the swimming pool and scratching up games of dodgeball, kickball, baseball -- you name it.
If we needed to keep our minds sharp, we had hours each day to read (one of my favorite reasons for summer vacation -- the time to read in a shady spot as long as I wanted). We read everything we loved, not out of a sense of obligation to a list of required summer reading.
We played checkers and other board games on the porch. No, our minds didn't stagnate.
I remember attending an outdoor summer camp for a couple of weeks in the summer. It was not necessary for a parent to haul me there; a bus picked up all the kids and dropped them off at the end of the day. And our parents would have seemed wildly out of place showing up at the camp for any reason.
Summer was filled with the outdoors, sunshine and an easygoing lightness of heart. Perhaps this was because each minute of the day was not scheduled and we were not regarded as tasks that had to be managed from morning until night.
This chronic over-planning of children's time is what has led parents to feel obligated to attend every fair, show, party and performance that are a part of such structured, supervised group activities.
How tragic that much of this lack of summer freedom is based on fear of the predators who have become the new domestic terrorists.
We keep the kids safely locked away from the outside, from having fun together in a spontaneous and open setting. But that's another essay.
My heart goes out to many children today, and to the parents who must pay for the constrictions upon their children's freedom. I feel blessed to have grown up in another generation, one who knew the bliss of endless, joyous summer.
